Week 1
Finally, after years of dreaming and  planning, we are breaking ground.  I  was amazed by the amount of transformation took place, where there once was rolling land now is a big hole and the ground that will soon be our house.  We had several older apple  trees removed to clear the site and there are now mounds of  dirt.  It took about a day and a half to excavate  our basement and have the septic system installed and than the concrete crew came in to pour the footings and set the forms for the poured 9' walls.  By the end of the week the walls  were poured and we were getting ready for the floors to be poured.

Week 2
We had the rough in plumbing for the septic and drains put in over the weekend.  Our excavator warned that the basement floor was all rock and we found out when we tried to dig the tenches for the plumbing.  Once we were done the removed the forms and sprayed the exterior wall with waterproofing  sealant. The next step was to set the drainage tile around the perimeter of the foundation than covered it with pea gravel.

Week 3
After a couple of rain days, they  poured the basement and garage floors.  We had  the garage floor have a 3" fall from back to the front to allow for drainage.  After a day of setting up we were ready for the rough back fill, all of our mounds were leveled and the site was leveled.  I could not believe he used all the dirt, I thought for sure we would have a pile left over.  Once the back fill was done it was time to start the framing process.

Week 4 to 6 (Framing)
Once our framers got there it didn't take long for them to get the house up, I believe it took them 16 days to have a totally enclosed house sided and roofed.  During this time it is extremely important that you visit the work site daily or at least make yourself available.  There are numerous decisions that arise during this time.  There  is also something on the blueprints that doesn't actually work when you start framing, so you will need to make decisions.  For us it was minor things, like making enough space for the HVAC returns, changing some closet sizes, etc...  During this time it is also important to have a good repore with you framers, materials must arrive on a timely fashion otherwise they have nothing to do and will probably move onto another job.  So hopefully all your decisions have been made and products ordered.  A little advice on picking your material supplier, i.e. lumber yard.  Least expensive bid not always the best.  Consider factors like quality, service and location to the job site.  We built in a rural area, approx. 3 miles from town, 25 miles from Bloomington, IL.  We went with our local lumber yard (RP Lumber).  They were slightly higher, but we saved in the long run on delivery charges and time.  It is inevitable that you will need something that you forget or was not delivered, and it was a simple phone call or a quick trip and we had it.

Week 7 to 12 ( Electrical, Plumbing, & HVAC)
During this process you are installing all the rough in of all the services for you house.  Once done, you will be ready for drywall.  This process took a little longer than we expected, mainly because we did a lot of work  ourselves with the help of our uncle who does this for a living.  One of the most difficult tasks of the entire building process was the electrical plan.  This involves location of all fixed lights, switches and what switches turn what on and off, and outlet, cable, and phone jack locations.  Rule #1, you can never have enough outlets, so don't be afraid to have more than one per wall.  I would recommend that even if you have an electrical plan on paper, you walk through the house with you electrician after the framing is completed and go over every switch and light fixture and make your changes now.  Plumbing and HVAC is pretty straightforward, there were no major problems there.  At the last minute we decided to put a Geothermal HVAC system in, I would highly recommend it to anyone in a rural area that has to use propane to heat there home.  More information can be found at geothermal.org.

Week 13 & 14 (Drywall)
Not much here, it took about two weeks for the subcontractor to hang and tape the drywall, when they were done, we were ready to paint.

Week 14 to 16 (Painting)
The ultimate do-it-yourself project, painting.  It took about 3 weeks, there were 4 people painting.  If your comfortable with a commercial paint sprayer I would go that route, it would do it in about a quarter of the time.  We went the roller route,  It wasn't to bad, except for the ceilings, it took 3 coats.  Other than that it was just time consuming.

Week 16 to 20 (Finishing Work)
So close, yet so far.  We were almost there, we could see the light at the end of the tunnel.  First the Cabinets and countertops were set, after careful measuring, we measured several times throughout the construction, everything fit. Next the flooring, we opted for wood laminate flooring in the kitchen and dining area, which I put down myself.  It was 700 square feet and it took about 18 hours to lay it all done.  It was fairly simple, just time consuming.  We put vinyl in the bathrooms and laundry room and carpet and the remaining rooms.  Once this was done the interior doors went up and in the meantime the finish plumbing and electrical were completed.  We our doing our own trim work and will be completed after we move in.  The whole finishing process was easy, but you have different subs you are dealing with so you need to be patient while they return to complete details.  Certain projects can be completed so far, until a different sub has to come in and do their thing and than the original sub can complete his portion.

With the house completed ( at least to the bank's satisfaction), we moved in the first week of November 2000.  The was still a lot of "little things" to finish, the trim, landscaping, electrical,  etc...  It will be a never ending projects..
 
 

Summary
The #1 question we get asked is will you ever do it again?  Yes, but hopefully we will not have to.  We are not planning on moving  I could not imagine not being involved in the design and the building of my house.  When we were going through open houses to do some research, every house had something we did not like.  If we had to move, we would find it difficult to to buy an existing home.  We also get asked about financing, the only advice I could give you is go to the lending institution with all your bids and be organized.  We had no trouble with our local bank.  During construction, we would submit invoices and they would cut us a check to pay the subs.  By the way, when you pay off your subs, make sure you get a lien waiver asap it will save you a lot of scrambling when you go to close on your loan.  I wish I had.  All in all it went fairly smoothly, if you stay on top of the process and communicate with your subs you should have no problems.  It was a rewarding experience and both my wife and I felt like we accomplished a long time goal when we closed on our house.

Thanks for visiting,
Matt